Member Article

New integration between care home systems will drive safety within the care and medication administration process

Care home residents regularly don’t receive the correct support with medicines in line with what is documented in their care plan according to the latest CQC ‘Medicines in Health and Adult Social Care report’1. Omnicell UK, the market leader in medication and supplies automation, and Nourish Care, a leading electronic care planning provider, have come together to provide a new integration that gives care staff greater visibility of a patient’s medication regime as part of their overall care plan.

Managing and monitoring resident’s medication regimes effectively can significantly impact the delivery and quality of care. Historically care planning and medication administration systems have been managed completely separately. This can potentially contribute to failings in support of residents’ care. The new integration means that Omnicell eMAR can now share data related to medication with the Nourish Care system, giving greater insight and driving best practice into the safety and individual care of each resident in the home. This provides care givers with the following:

 Sight of the latest prescribed medications, supporting carers in assessments and reviews without having to switch between two separate technology systems  Information on when new medication has been prescribed to residents, so it is possible to monitor or adjust care plans accordingly  A summary of the medication, dose and time administered to better understand the medical history and individual pathway of a resident  Ability to correlate the data for medication administered with other information such as falls, accidents and additional incidents

Omnicell eMAR automates the entire medication management and administration process ensuring each resident receives the correct medicine dose at the correct time. The system gathers information, provides prompts and accurate instructions for staff and managers in real time at the touch of a button. Each individual medication is identified through a barcode applied in pharmacy, which can then be tracked at all stages from check in at the care home through to administration to a resident. It provides an invaluable medicines history for each patient and includes a simple alert and verification system to minimise the risk of medication errors in the home.

Residents in care homes take an average of 7.2 medicines per day. With each additional medicine comes an increased risk of errors in prescription, monitoring, dispensing or administration, adverse drug reactions, impaired medicines adherence which can lead to compromised quality of life for patients. CQC’s annual state of care report found that safety was the biggest concern with one of the main contributing factors being poor medicines management.

Nourish’s customisable and easy-to-use software supports recording at the point of care, saving time and allowing for more accurate notes. Access to information ensures that care teams are kept up-to-date and can make informed decisions for better care. With records that are secure, accurate and compliant, evidencing care becomes more manageable and care management more organised. Now with the latest integration with Omnicell, Nourish empowers care teams further with contextual medication history and usage helping to ensure better care decisions are made both at moments of care and when planning care needs.

Cyrus Hodivala, Medicines Adherence Sales Director at Omnicell UK & Ireland, comments; “Whilst the care sector has undoubtedly made great strides to ensure the safer use of medicines across its services, there are still areas for improvement. A disconnect between care planning and medication management could be contributing to the problem of poor support of residents with their medication regimes highlighted in the CQC ‘Medicines in Health and Adult Social Care report’. As leaders in innovation within the sector we have developed an answer to this problem. The newly enhanced eMAR system for care homes links to and works in conjunction with individual care plans providing the care giver with crucial data and insight. We’re anticipating this will help to drive much needed efficiencies and drive patient safety within the care sector and hope that it eventually becomes the gold standard when managing medication administration within care planning.” Nuno Almeida founder of Nourish Care says, “Our mission is to support care teams to provide high quality care and we have worked on a number of integrations and projects to deliver this. This latest collaboration with Omnicell is entirely consistent with our mission and provides care teams the choice of having an eMAR system with evidence of quality. We are also looking forward to working with the combination of the care planning and medicines management data as part of our Nourish Analytics.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Imogen Daldy .